Released 10/21/2009

Chapin chats to Athens, thanks to video

By Andrew Seguin

To become familiar with the far corners of the world, nothing beats travel. But during a busy mid-October school week, that’s not an option for Chapin students. What is, thanks to technology, is a videoconference with peers who are sitting in a similar classroom across an ocean.

Chapin girls spoke to students in the Bahamas, Denmark, France, Greece and Spain during the recently concluded International Week. Chapin’s electronic envoys to Greece were Class 8 and 10 girls who study ancient Greek; they chatted in English with their counterparts at the Arsakeio Schools in Athens.

Arsakeio and Chapin had been linked even before the students gathered in front of the video camera and began talking. Chapin teachers had visited the schools this summer, courtesy of a generous educational grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, and had come home with relationships with the faculty there.

It was now the Chapin students’ turn to form direct connections. They learned that Greek teenagers aren’t so different from themselves, and that sometimes the biggest obstacle in a cultural exchange is becoming accustomed to the technology used to make it happen. Once they had mastered the videoconference setup, the Chapin girls responded to any questions they received with humor and confidence.

The Greek students were curious about how many Americans study Greek, what life is like in New York, and whether or not any of the Chapin students had been to Europe.

The question-and-answer format yielded some intriguing differences in videoconference conduct that may or may not have been rooted in the two cultures. Each side had received the other’s questions in advance, to adequately prepare; it turned out that each Greek student had been formally assigned to answer one Chapin question and read a pre-written response to it, whereas the Chapin students fielded questions on the fly, jumping into the conversation as appropriate. European formalism versus American candor? Perhaps it was simply two ways of approaching a task, though the Chapin students certainly had cultural differences on their minds.

“What do you think of America?” one of them asked a Greek student. He said that Americans are seen in Greece as friendly, passionate, often overweight and prone to spending money, and that New Yorkers, in particular, are known for being aggressive.

Chapin girls also asked the Greeks about life at their school, whether they see a lot of American movies and which places they should visit if they were to travel to Greece.

Now that the Chapin students have contacts in Athens and a unique window on Greek culture, perhaps they will one day be inspired to cross the Atlantic to learn even more.